


Erythema Solare

by constant_vellichor



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Slash, i mean i guess you could read this as platonic but why would you, the truly astounding existence of a redhead who has never experienced sunburn, this is so dumb theyre both so dumb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:40:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23833264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/constant_vellichor/pseuds/constant_vellichor
Summary: ’It was then, of course, because Gideon’s life sucked balls and she should have never expected anything else, that the Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus stalked into the room.“Griddle,” said Harrow, “how come you look like a particularly unfortunate boiled lobster?”’Gideon Nav, a redhead whose experience of life has so far consisted of spending all her time underground slathered in paint, experiences her first sunburn at Canaan House.Harrow helps.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 23
Kudos: 203





	Erythema Solare

**Author's Note:**

> Set in a somewhat nebulous time period after they arrive at Canaan House but before everything starts going to shit after the deaths of the Fifth. 
> 
> I finished this book less than thirty-six hours ago then immediately blacked out and when I woke up I had 2.2K of sunburn-related homoerotic shenanigans. Like bro I got SHIT to DO what happened to me

If Gideon’s being entirely honest with herself (and she tries not to be, ever, about anything) the whole situation is totally her fault, at least until she can find some convoluted reason to pin it all on Harrowhark.

She shouldn’t have been hanging around in Dulcinea’s garden in the first place, especially with the Seventh heir currently MIA and liable to walk in on her any second, _especially_ especially when divested of her musty black Ninth House robe. Not that Gideon would particularly _mind_ Dulcinea seeing her sweating and stripped down to her bandeau, wielding sword and knuckle with _extremely_ tolerable ability, but she’d also prefer her distal phalanges remain her sole property rather than joining her necromancer’s morbid menagerie of future skeletons.

The salt-encrusted, fecund-smelling garden wasn’t exactly a duelling floor, but it was one of the more decent places in Canaan House Gideon had found to train unobserved when the temptation to cut several embarrassingly-placed holes in every one of Harrow’s outfits in the Ninth quarters became too much to bear. On the rare occurrence that Dulcinea had chosen to lounge indoors, the garden was private and out of the way, and if Gideon occasionally lost her temper with her _stupid rusted toothpick of a cav weapon_ and took her frustrations out on the poor innocent plants surrounding her, they, at least, could be trusted to grow back.

It was after one such epic sparring bout with a sad-looking pale-green cactus-thing that had left Gideon triumphantly sticky and the plant forlornly eviscerated that Gideon did a bad thing that she would very soon regret.

Exhausted, full of a hearty First House meal, muscles pleasantly aching from her workout and feeling smugly at ease with the world, Gideon took her first ever nap in the midday sunshine, belly-down and drooling contentedly onto a flattened lounge chair.

She woke two hours later to a prickling burn all over her back and the heavy footsteps of Protesilaus the Seventh on the brick staircase inside.

“Shit,” said Gideon intelligently.

“Shit shit shit shit _shit_ ,” she said again, scrambling off the creaking lounge chair and ducking for cover behind a cluster of large clay pots containing some very orange anemones roughly the size of dinner plates. She could see her robe crumpled in a miserable little pile on the opposite side of the garden, but her plans of a well-executed duck-and-roll operation to retrieve it were dashed as the Seventh necro and cavalier manoeuvred their way through the door, the hulking Protesilaus carrying Dulcinea, who was rocking the ‘ragdoll in a very expensive sundress’ look as much as she ever did.

“Fuck _me_ that stings,” hissed Gideon, perhaps unwisely, as she used Protesilaus’ distraction as he gently set Dulcinea down on the lounge chair and adjusted the back to dash ungainly out of the sunlight and all the way back to the Ninth quarters, head pounding and flesh throbbing with every step.

Which is how she came to be sitting on the edge of the old four-poster bed in Harrowhark’s bedroom, using a spotted shaving mirror she’d pried from a crumbling vanity to examine what had to be _by far_ the worst injury any cavalier of the Ninth House, crusty bastard Matthias Nonius included, had _ever sustained_ in the ten thousand years since the Resurrection.

She was _peeling_ , for fuck’s sake.

In great long strips of whitish skin, too, interrupted every so often by a yellowed blister filled with clear pus, stippled across a canvas of skin so red and inflamed Gideon was one hundred percent sure she’d glow in the dark if tested. And it hurt like a _bitch_ \- whenever Gideon twisted around to get a better view in her clouded mirror, another blister would burst and the hot fluid trickle down her back, carving out a burning trail that made her hiss through her teeth. It was, in a word, _truly fucking miserable._

It was then, of course, because Gideon’s life sucked balls and she should have never expected otherwise, that the Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus stalked into the room, her usual charming sucked-lemon expression etched into the lines of her sour little face, and stopped dead when she saw a shirtless Gideon contorting painfully in new and interesting ways on her unmade bed.

“Griddle,” said Harrow, “how come you look like a particularly unfortunate boiled lobster?”

“Fuck off, Harrow,” said Gideon, and went back to her painful ministrations, trying her very best to pretend that Harrow wasn’t bearing witness to this at all and would have absolutely no new material to taunt Gideon with for the rest of both of their lives.

Harrow seemed surprisingly happy to comply with Gideon’s desperate fantasy, and after lurking her way pointily over to the wardrobe to hang up today’s depressing-ass nun’s vestments next to tomorrow’s depressing-ass nun’s vestments, she made her way into the bathroom. Gideon heard her rummaging around in there for a few minutes (undoubtedly for her spare thumbscrews or something- _just_ like her to lull Gideon into a false sense of security only to pounce later) before a skinny arm jutted out from the doorway and a white tube was unceremoniously lobbed at Gideon’s head.

However, since Harrow (whose limbs could generously be compared to wet spaghetti on a _good_ day) had thrown it, it fell far, _far_ short and landed a metre away from Gideon’s feet. She bent down to pick it up, body screaming in protest as another blister burst right between her shoulder blades where her neglected longsword would usually fit. She read the label on the tube.

“Where the fuck did you get _bacta_ gel from? I thought the Ninth was all about slowly withering away from entirely preventable tetanus infections in the name of the Locked Tomb.”

Gideon didn’t particularly care (even though top-of-the-line Second medical tech was _expensive_ and she was already trying to figure out a way she could hoard it), but she felt eighteen years of practice in _building-witty-comebacks-from-basically-nothing_ bubble to the surface- she wasn’t about to let _Harrow_ have the last word on _anything_. Especially not when the contents of the tube possibly weren’t bacta gel at all and was probably some horrible bone-paste that would suck Gideon’s marrow out through her sinuses or something. Before she could ruminate any further on this truly horrifying concept, Harrow opened her mouth:

“There’s a fully packed first aid kit in all the bathrooms, which you would _know_ if you’d bothered to do a proper sweep of the rooms before plonking yourself down like a lecherous bedbug,” said Harrow peevishly.

“Wait, in _all_ the bathrooms? How much of this dump have you actually explored?”

Harrow ignored her and swept her way back into the bathroom, locking (and probably bone warding) the door behind her. Gideon heard the squeak of a faucet turning and then the sound of the sink running. This was also punctuated by her back, clearly deciding that it had been far too long neglected, giving a truly spiteful throb. Gideon promptly decided that whatever trap Harrow had set was worth springing on the off chance there actually _was_ bacta gel in the tube.

Which, it turned out… there was?

Gideon looked at the clear turquoise gel dripping down her fingers and scrunched up her nose. After a cursory examination, she decided that she honestly didn’t give a shit anymore and began slathering gobbets of bacta across the fried skin of her shoulders, sighing in relief as she worked the cool gel into her burning flesh. With any luck she’d be back to her usual flawless and charismatic self after a good night’s sleep.

She smoothed the bacta across the stubble on the back of her neck, working her way down towards the worst of the burn in the middle of her back, where blisters clustered and burst like magma deposits.

She arched her back and bent her elbow over her shoulder to reach the spot. She couldn’t. She reached up around her hip. Also nothing. She wasn’t going to be able to reach.

Gideon weighed her options.

One, she could let the sunburn heal naturally, continue peeling skin and popping blisters for the next week, and endure the torment that would surely rain down upon her. Two, she could build some kind of arm-lengthening contraption using splintered wood, old osseo, and her extremely limited knowledge of mechanical engineering. Three, she could do the unthinkable. She could swallow her pride and ask Harrow for help.

Gideon was halfway through her attempt to tug the legs off a particularly rickety-looking chair for Option Two when Harrowhark emerged from the bathroom, skull paint freshly reapplied and looking very irritated to find Gideon’s (very attractive, thank you) shadow still darkening her door.

“Griddle,” she enunciated very slowly, “why are you dismantling my furniture?”

“Nunya,” replied Gideon, trying to seem as fascinated by the unique fungal patterns on the underside of the chair as possible.

“And this has absolutely nothing to do with the one remaining patch of sunburn on your back?”

“ _Nun. Ya.”_ Said Gideon through gritted teeth, wondering if she could feasibly dress one of the skeletal servers in Harrow’s robes while she found the best place in the house to hide her necro’s body.

“Oh, come _here_ , you imbecile,” said Harrow too loudly from behind her, and when Gideon turned her head to look she was pointing at the bed.

“You’re not my type, o glorious leader, but thanks for the offer,” said Gideon with what she hoped was a wink, but since she accidentally closed both eyes probably came off as more of a very deliberate blink.

Harrow blinked back at her, then shrugged one cobwebby, black-clad shoulder.

“Then enjoy every one of your new and interesting types of skin cancer,” she said, turning to leave, and Gideon was on that bed faster than if Harrow had, in fact, been her type.

Harrow sat down next to her gingerly, as if getting too close to Gideon would afford her a fatal electric shock, and tugged off her gloves to reveal pallid, long-fingered hands that Gideon was _sure_ were clammier than anything that might lurk in the ocean surrounding them. She picked up the half-empty bacta tube and squirted out some of the gel onto her fingers.

The tension in the room was so thick and _weird_ Gideon could only have cut through it with her longsword, and she would have done quite literally anything to break it, which is why just as Harrow’s fingertips brushed her skin she said,

“Queensbury rules. Nothing above the neck or below the belt-” and then Harrow smacked her _directly_ on the _worst fucking part_ of her burned back _so hard_ that Gideon nearly went flying from the shock.

“ _God-fucking-ow, Nonagesimus, what is your_ problem _-”_

“Don’t be _crass_ , Griddle, it doesn’t suit you,” Harrow shot back, flustered, and when Gideon twisted around so her face could convey the proper expression of righteous outrage she could have _sworn_ that under her inch-thick layer of nun-paint Harrow was _blushing_.

This was so strange and off-putting that Gideon, who would usually grab the closest improvised weapon she could find and go in for the kill, twisted back around in a huff and hunched her shoulders to give Harrow better access just so she wouldn’t have to look at her face.

“Go on then, empress of pitch. Do your worst.”

“Do shut _up_ , Nav,” said Harrowhark, and got to work.

After the first assault, she was surprisingly gentle, working quickly and efficiently, fingertips skirting the worst of the blisters and careful not to tear off any more flaps of skin than necessary. Gideon sat very still, elbows on her knees and chin in her hands, and absolutely did not enjoy the feeling of someone touching her in a capacity not trying to kill her. _Especially_ when that someone was Harrow, whose soft, un-calloused fingers and faint smell of library dust, face paint and cloves were absolutely not reassuring at all, no-siree.

As Harrow finished up, she leaned in closer to Gideon’s body to smear the gel into every nook and cranny she could, an act which Gideon loved and loathed in equal measure, and _wow, no more of_ that _particular train of thought, Nav, this situation is weird enough as is._ She was pressed so close to Gideon that she could feel her necromancer’s breath ruffling the shorn red hairs on the back of her head.

Gideon sat frozen as the breath migrated to the side of her neck, then her jawbone, then her cheek, still mostly devoid of paint, her fight-or-flight response seemingly still catching up to the absurdity of Gideon’s day.

Then the hand on her back drew away, and the breath on her face with it. All of Gideon’s sensory faculties came back to her in a rush, and she jerked away from Harrow as the other girl wiped her hands clean of bacta gel on her skirt and nodded to herself before she turned to a staring Gideon.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Griddle. I was just _checking_ ,” she said.

“Checking _what_?”

Harrow’s face split into that familiar wicked grin.

“You have so many freckles now you look like the osteoporosis inside Sister Glaurica’s bones.”

Harrow’s ensuing shriek as the mostly-empty tube of bacta gel hit her square in the nose echoed loudly through the halls of Canaan House.

**Author's Note:**

> Drop me a comment or kudo and I'll love you forever. Plus I'm on Tumblr at constant-vellichor so HMU anytime to yell about necromantic space lesbians or drop a fic request. Peace out love ya

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Red's Not Your Color](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24375457) by [Mijali](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mijali/pseuds/Mijali)




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